


At Her Own Hand

by breathtaken



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Canon Era, Crossdressing, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Masturbation, kink bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 13:36:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1389652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathtaken/pseuds/breathtaken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She suspects he would like her like this, that he would see the excitement in standing side by side as equals, and not feel threatened by it. They would serve the King by day, in matching leathers, swords at their hands and plumed hats upon their heads; and by night, they would be lovers."</p><p>Kink Bingo fill: crossdressing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Her Own Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Episode 1x08.

Constance hears the click of the front door closing and sighs deeply, long-held tension easing in her chest at last. She finally has the house to herself again for at least a few hours, and if she's lucky, Bonacieux won't be back before midnight.

After the way she's behaved towards him, she's probably lucky he's willing to leave her alone at all.

The past month has been a positive hell, with him always there, always watching – allowing her no time to herself, to grieve for what she's lost. For all their years of marriage he's never been more than half-present; but now, the Cardinal's contract coupled with his new-found distrust of her mean that he's hardly ever away, taking up what she's come to think of as _her_ space, keeping her on edge.

He will never truly trust her again, she knows that; and all for a few brief weeks of base indulgence. A wife who strays can be expected to stray again. And letting d'Artagnan kiss her in the street – what _had_ she been thinking? The shame, should it become known!

Better to have rebuffed him from the start than to have set this trap for herself.

And having realised the way things _could_ be, she doesn't know how she can bear the prospect of losing it all again.

The loss of d'Artagnan's love is bad enough; but that alone, she could have borne. She'd always known their affair could never have made them both truly happy. No, what hurts even more than losing him as a lover is the knowledge that with it, she will lose her link to the Musketeers. No more fighting lessons, no more adventures; no more saving lives and shooting to kill. No more the chance to do something with her life that actually _matters_.

She could never have dreamed of so great an opportunity for a mere merchant's wife, and she realises only now that in bedding d'Artagnan, she's thrown it all away.

Now that she's had a taste of what it would be like to live at her own hand1, how can she ever be contented again?

She paces up and down the room a few times, frowning, as if she's trying to come to a decision; then throws up her hands and rushes up the stairs, all but bursting into her bedroom and flinging the armoire doors wide, needing to see and touch what she keeps hidden there.

At the back of her closet, half-buried between a pile of petticoats that have seen better days, is a nondescript hatbox; and she lifts it out, places it on her bed and removes the lid, revealing a hat inside that's decidedly out of fashion. By her current standards it's gaudy and ostentatious, a relic of a time when money was in greater supply, and Bonacieux used to make an effort to be home on Sundays so that they could go to church together, walking through the neighbourhood with her on his arm the proudest moment of his week.

It's the kind of thing that an observer would assume she's hung onto out of nostalgia, perhaps a longing for the return of better times; but the truth is that it's merely concealing something far more important.

She takes the hat out of the box to reveal a man's shirt underneath: or rather, a boy's shirt, cream linen, with a deep-slashed neck and bell sleeves, like soldiers wear. Folded up inside it she keeps a wide strip of bandage, several metres in length, and most shockingly of all, an old pair of her husband's smallclothes which she claimed to have thrown away, but instead have been carefully seamed and darted to fit her as well as she could.

This little collection is not enough, by itself; but she doesn't dare to keep anything more in the house. Not yet.

She lays the clothes out carefully on the bed, a neat row of garments, and briefly caresses the edge of the linen as she stands and just looks for a moment, fear and doubt colliding with the bone-deep longing that has been building for weeks.

Her hands go to the laces in the small of her back.

It's become a ritual; she approaches it reverently, in set order. Her bodice is the first thing to go, and she breathes deeply as it falls away, appreciating the relief of air rushing into her lungs without constraint. Shoes and stockings come off, then the skirts, and she's lighter immediately without them weighing her down, standing only in her thin shift, which she fights her way out of with the air of a conqueror.

She pulls the smalls up to her hips and laces them, unused to the feeling of fabric between her legs. Then she turns to the glass, where she wraps the length of bandage tight round her breasts, binding them flat. Finally, the shirt goes over her head, and she turns from side to side appreciatively, admiring, and a smile creeps onto her face for what feels like the first time in days.

Yes, she could believe in herself like this.

She strides barefoot across the bedroom floor – long, masculine strides, relishing the freedom of movement afforded her. She longs for boots, leather jacket and breeches, a soldier's dress; a hat that she can pile her hair up into, even a rapier of her own. Then she could be a true adventurer.

She wonders what their lives are really like – not men like Bonacieux, but like the Musketeers she knows. Men of honour who duel even though it's illegal, involved in countless plots like the few she's already been privy to, who drink and play cards in the kind of bawdy taverns she's too respectable to ever have set foot inside, have intrigues with women –

That pulls her up short. She can imagine everything else, but as a real man, with a woman of his own – it doesn't fit. She can't see herself in the role of lover.

No, better to just be herself. Better to remain Constance, only playing a man's role, her true femininity concealed beneath her bound chest and her gentleman's smalls. She could fight and drink and gamble alongside them, and take a lover that way too. Someone with a sense of fun, who understands her need for freedom and doesn't object to the way she chooses to live.

d'Artagnan comes to mind again; and Constance presses her fingers to her temples as if to try and stop her thoughts, because even in this make-believe existence, she can't imagine them being happy together. d'Artagnan who loves her, whom she was forced to treat so cruelly… but who taught her to fight with reluctance. Who's never truly let her prove herself because he's always worried about keeping her safe.

She's been safe her whole life.

No, she would have a lover who'd be joyous and carefree, passionate about her when they were together but willing to let her walk into battle at his side. A man who would desire her but not seek to possess her. A man like… Aramis.

 _Aramis_. It seems ridiculous at first, but the more she thinks about it, the more it comes to make perfect sense.

Aramis, who may not be someone _this_ Constance would choose, but who is handsome and charming, and when she speaks, looks at her as though there's no one else in the room. Who held little Henri in his arms and let her defend them both – him an accomplished soldier, her just a green girl in her first real fight, and he's never said a further word about it.

Yes, she would love Aramis. They would love each other, and no matter that he would not be faithful. Maybe _she_ would not be faithful either.

She knows he's a libertine, though they all make a noticeable effort not to speak of it in her presence; but even though he no doubt loves many women, she cannot imagine that he does so unfeelingly, desiring only to bed them. After seeing the care he showed Agnes, she's sure that would be against his nature, and Constance knows she could trust him to appreciate the weight of her heart in his hands.

She suspects he would like her like this, that he would see the excitement in standing side by side as equals, and not feel threatened by it. They would serve the King by day, in matching leathers, swords at their hands and plumed hats upon their heads; and by night, they would be lovers.

The image that comes to mind is startling in its clarity: he would take off his own hat to kiss her, leaving hers on, as he slips his arm under her jacket and pulls her close to his hot, unyielding body, his hands finding the secret curves of her waist and resting there, the places only he knows to seek.

He would be a study in passion, igniting that fire low in her belly that only d'Artagnan has ever stoked. He would know the mysteries of the body, the kind of things that shocked her to hear when she was first admitted into the confidences of fellow married women. To feel such pleasure over and over at another's hands! She can scarcely imagine it.

She's following the path of her own imagination with her fingers before she even realises, stroking her own neck and then down, the hollow of her throat, her breastbone, down and along the deep slit in her shirt. He'd find it exciting, arousing even, that the truth of her womanhood would be known to him alone.

His fingers would come to rest here, at the frayed edge of the linen bandage across her breasts, and he would stroke speculatively for a few moments with his thumb, making her anticipate what comes next. Then he would push it down – but no, it's tied too tight and she can't get her fingers underneath. Well then, his hands would go around her back and unravel the bandage where it's fastened – like this, unwinding until the linen pools at her waist and her breasts are free to his touch.

Constance moans as she pinches a nipple, rolling it between thumb and finger, imagining Aramis' own large, callused hands on her, teasing and practiced. He'd say something then, something witty, and laugh warmly in her ear, the laugh of a co-conspirator.

She's flushing now, panting, and feels her colour rising along with her desire. Her hands are kneading her breasts, pulling at the nipples, and she slumps breathlessly against the wall. She's inches from her bed, the bed Bonacieux has her in, but she won't lie there now. This is for her alone.

"Gorgeous," Aramis murmurs, smiling against her lips, one hand still at her breast as the other moves lower, begins to tease apart the laces of her smalls. Their movements are hurried, almost frantic – though he's laid her out on her bedroll scores of times and learned every inch of her skin with his hands and mouth, tonight she has a deep, aching need that he's determined to satisfy.

The troubling fastenings removed, he gives her one last lingering kiss before leaning back to look her full in the face. "I want you to look at me as I touch you," he says, low and sultry, the one hand stilling around her breast as he turns his other hand around to push down inside her smalls and ghost over her folds, cupping her with the lightest of touches.

Constance moans aloud. It's perfect, and it's not nearly enough, just the merest suggestion of what she knows he can give her. "Please, more," she begs, allowing herself for the first time in her life to give full voice to her own desire.

Aramis smiles wickedly. "It would be my pleasure."

At last he pushes a finger between her folds to find the sweet wetness beneath, where she's most sensitive, and she jerks at the shock of the contact, and would move away from him if she wasn't pinned against the wall with his hand moving inexorably over her.

"Sensitive?" he teases.

She bites her lip and whimpers, not trusting herself to speak.

"So beautiful," Aramis says, sliding his finger slowly, tantalisingly back and forth over the little nub of flesh that is the root of all her pleasure. "And only I know the truth of it. Do you know what that does to me, knowing that the man who fights alongside me is also the woman I make love to?

"It's distracting," he continues, hand leaving her breast to pull her body against him, so he can push his hardness against the curve of her hipbone as he strokes her. "Sometimes I look at you in your fine Musketeer's uniform and I remember having you, undressing you, discovering those fine woman's curves after you told me what you really were. And no-one else has any idea. It's positively intoxicating."

He adds another finger, rubbing now along either side in the slick channels of her folds, and the pleasure is maddening.

"Take me," she moans, "please…"

She aches to be filled, blood beating insistently inside her, and feels a pang at the thought that her need can't be satisfied; and the Aramis in her mind smiles and shifts his fingers, circling her nub again with fluency. "Not yet, darling," he replies teasingly, knowing how desperately she wants it. "We can't run the risk that someone will come looking. But when this mission's over I promise to take you home and make love to you for hours."

In response she groans, covers his hand with hers where it disappears inside her smalls. "Oh, yes, don't stop…"

He leans in and kisses her again, and increases the pressure of his fingers perfectly until she feels the peak of her pleasure come, crash through her like a warm wave breaking on the shore.

She slumps sadly against the wall, her fantasy immediately dissipated, her lover fled.

This is always the hardest part: coming back to herself.

She pulls her hand out of her smallclothes, and as the last tendrils of pleasure melt away and her breathing settles, she sinks down onto the bed at last, fingering the hem of her shirt thoughtfully.  

Maybe it's _not_ impossible.

She doesn't have a sword of her own, couldn't make an independent living, but she has three men who she's sure would help her do whatever she desired (maybe four, if d'Artagnan can look past his wounded pride long enough to forgive her).

She doesn't pretend it would be easy. It's as terrifying as it is appealing, and goes against everything she's ever known.

But most importantly, she has a choice; and if it gets too bad here, she can always, _always_ fight her way out.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 i.e. independently.


End file.
